The Jamestown Cannibalism Is No Surprise – It's Part Of Human History

This April 2013 photo shows a forensic facial
reconstruction of human remains excavated in James Fort,
Jamestown, Va. The remains are proof of survival cannibalism
during the “starving time” over the winter of 1609-10 in historic
Jamestown.Don
Hurlbert, Smithsonian

Famine cannibalism has a long and grim history. During the siege
of Jerusalem in AD70 mothers were said to have eaten their own
aborted foetuses, while in an Italian famine of AD450 parents ate
their dead children. In 1594, during the siege of Paris by Henri
IV, an emergency famine committee agreed that bread should be
made from bones from the charnel house of the Holy Innocents. It
was available by mid-August, but those eating it died.

During the thirty years' war it was claimed that starving parents ate
their dead children in sheer desperation. In 1636, in the village
of Steinhaus, a woman apparently lured a girl of 12 and a boy of
five into her house, "killed them both, and devoured them with
her neighbour". In Picardy during this conflict, the Jesuit GS
Menochio saw "several inhabitants" so crazed with hunger that
they "ate their own arms and hands and died in despair".

Cases like these cast an ironic light on the Jamestown
cannibalism. Early modern Europeans continually denounced the
savage tribal man-eaters of the Americas. Yet at the same time
Protestants and Catholics were engaged in their own tribal wars
of religion, and many cases of famine cannibalism sprang directly
from these conflicts. Even much later over in North America
itself, the relationship of savage natives and civilised
colonisers could be surprising. In 1761, in what was then still
the cannibal territory of Canada, three Anglo-Americans were
killed by Indians "in revenge for an Indian boy that the famished
trio had killed and eaten".

Throughout the 19th century, the most likely catalyst for
cannibalism beyond warfare was shipwreck. Most notoriously, there
was the 1884 case of the Mignonette. After this yacht was wrecked
on its way from England to Australia, Tom Dudley and Edwin
Stephens murdered Richard Parker, aged 17. They drank his blood
almost immediately, before cutting him open and eating his liver.
With their legal counsel ultimately pleading extreme necessity,
Dudley and Stephens were first sentenced to hang, and later given
pardons, conditional on six-month jail terms.

Controversial as it was, the Mignonette was only one of numerous
reported cases. And other ocean survivors could also tell you
that, in such straits, vampirism was just as useful as
cannibalism. Having exhausted supplies of fresh water and your
own urine, blood was your drink (and food) of last resort. Hence
the New
York Times headline, "Shipwrecked men vampires", of March
1895, telling of how Daniel Clarke and Thomas Moore lived for 14
days on 16 biscuits, salt water, the uppers of their shoes – and
blood sucked from each other's bodies.

This kind of benign auto-vampirism was fairly common: after the
Shannon struck an iceberg in April 1832, 18 survivors were bled
by the ship's surgeon, some drinking their own blood immediately,
and others mixing it with flour into a kind of gruesome bread
paste. Elsewhere the vampirism was more drastic. In September
1899 three sailors stranded off North America survived by
drinking the blood of those expired from dehydration. When this
ran out, they cast lots. The loser was killed, his blood drunk
straight from his veins, and much of his body eaten.

Was prearranged murder less culpable than spontaneous murder?
While those who consumed the dead were doubtless repelled, they
escaped such dilemmas. But in one such case, rights to a body
were asserted in a particularly startling way. After the Frances
Mary was wrecked in the Atlantic in February 1826, survivors
languished for several days on bread and ship's biscuit.

On 21 February James Clarke died. He was committed to the deep
with prayers, unmolested. But a day can be a long time in the
politics of starvation. When John Wilson died on 22 February he
was quartered and hung up to dry, and on the next day the
deceased J Moore had his heart and liver eaten. Until their
rescue on 7 March the survivors lived on corpses – perhaps
recalling as they forced down human flesh the spectacle of those
who had drunk salt water and died raving mad. During this period
the Master's wife, feeding on human brains, described them as the
most delicious food she had ever tasted. Most memorably of all,
when sailor James Frier died, his fiancee Ann Saunders "shrieked
a loud yell", snatched a cup, "cut her late intended husband's
throat, and drank his blood, insisting that she had the greatest
right to it". She then got the better of a scuffle with the
ship's mate, Clerk, and allowed him to drink one cup to her two.

In extremis, how would you deal with such a dilemma? Try not to
complain about the airline food on your next flight.